CHAPTER XXI

THE MIDDLESEX MAGISTRATE

II

WAR AGAINST ROBBERY AND MURDER

No description can easily exaggerate the lawless state of London when Fielding took office. The following item from the newspapers of December, 1748, is but typical of the violent crimes occurring every week and almost every day:

"This evening, as a gentleman and lady were going out of Drury-lane playhouse, a pickpocket snatch'd at the lady's watch, upon which the gentleman collar'd the fellow; but immediately another came to attack the gentleman, who behaved very gallantly, by immediately running the fellow thro' the body, and he died in half an hour afterwards. Not only pickpockets, but street-robbers and highwaymen are grown to a great pitch of insolence at this time, robbing in gangs, defying authority, and often rescuing their companions, and carrying them off in triumph."*

Horace Walpole, returning from Holland House on another evening, was robbed in Hyde Park, after the skin of one cheek had been grazed by the highwayman's bullet. Near the same place his uncle Horatio was stopped and had his face scorched with powder. These were common incidents within the heart of Westminster in the Haymarket and Piccadilly, right under the Duke of Devonshire's wall. Within the memory of man, streets and roads had never been so infested with footpads, while highway"The London Magazine," XVII, 570 (Dec., 1748).

men rode through the town to visit gambling-houses or to attend the masquerades. Sometimes these robbers waylaid people in daylight, but more often at night when they could escape under its cover. Nowadays there is no darkness for a city, but in Fielding's London the case was quite different. The lamps were never lighted until six o'clock in the evening, and those that did not flicker out before were extinguished at midnight; and when the moon was full they were not lighted at all. From midnight till sunrise might be seen the torch of the linkboy conducting some gentleman home, or the lantern of a watchman as he made his rounds. Save for these streaks of light, the town was as dark as Erebus; it was "the darkness visible" of Milton's Hell.

The watchmen in general were timid and feeble old men, engaged for a few pence a night. The constables to whom they handed over suspected persons were a grade better; but they were few in number and hard to find when they were wanted. Constable and watchman were as likely to be at an alehouse as on the streets. To tumble them into the gutter when they were in the way, and to run off with their staff or lantern or rattle, was more a jest than an offence. The whole story of the police system is summed up in the Penlez riots. The watch amounted to nothing; no constable except Saunders Welch did his duty; no justice except Fielding cared to interfere, for there was danger in the business. Not even this sort of protection was given to the outskirts of the metropolis, where the gentlemen of the road, in gold-laced caps with crape over their faces, waited on horseback for easy victims. Aware of this, the inhabitants of the suburbs organized themselves into a police to patrol the turnpikes until eleven o'clock at night, and then they went to bed. No one, if he could help it, ever entered London alone by night. Tom Jones, having only Partridge with him, tried

it and succeeded, but he had to pass over the body of a highwayman. Fresh from the country, he did not know that it was customary for travellers who were forced to take the risk, to band together in companies well armed.

ones.

This influx of robbers was often attributed by newspapers to the large number of disbanded soldiers and sailors after the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, who, finding no other occupation, augmented the old gangs and formed new Some of them were desperate characters; others, like the highwayman in "Tom Jones," were made criminals by necessity-they had to choose between starvation and robbery. If they reached Newgate or some other prison, their state became dreadful. "Graft" was rampant, there was no discipline, robbery and murder were frequent within the very walls, there was no sanitation, and the inmates died in shoals of jail fever. Before bringing prisoners into court, it was customary to wash them in vinegar that the infection might not take hold of judge and jury. If the highwaymen reached Tyburn, they were drawn there in carts, hanged in the presence of a vast crowd, wept over by sentimental women, and made heroes instead of objects of detestation. Such was criminal London as Fielding found it. In his contest with the corruption of the Walpole Government, he had assumed the rôle of Hercules slaying the hydra; he now undertook, in his own phrase, to cleanse the Augean Stables.

Had he been a soldier, his first endeavour would have been a reorganization of the police, the need of which was apparent. He had no more respect for the watch than had Shakespeare when the great dramatist drew Dogberry and his staff. Their ignorance, dishonesty, and general incompetency, are all depicted in "The Coffee-House Politician." The establishment of a new police system, however, required mature consideration; and Fielding decided for the present not to disturb a time-honoured institution,

sslected

best of

Constables

but rather to improve it so far as he could by recommending the retention of every constable who had proved efficient. In this indirect way, he gathered about him a group of officers who could be depended upon-so numerous in the course of a year or two that he was willing occasionally to spare one for the Commission of Peace or for a prison which needed a strong man over it. Thus he wrote to the

Duke of Newcastle :

"My Lord,

It being of the utmost consequence to the Public to have a proper Person Keeper of the new Prison at this Time, I beg leave to recommend Mr William Pentlow a Constable of St George Bloomsbury to your Graces Protection in the present Vacancy. He is a Man of whose Courage and Integrity I have seen the highest Proofs, and is indeed every way qualified for the charge. I am with the most perfect Respect,

My Lord,

Your Graces most obedient and most
humble servant

HENRY FFIELDING.

Bow Street, Jan. 15, 1750 [N. S. 1751]"

Mr. Pentlow had distinguished himself in the apprehension of a gang of robbers; and as a reward he received the prison appointment on Fielding's recommendation, despite the fact that the Duke of Newcastle wished to place over the new prison in Clerkenwell a certain John Bland who had never learned to read or write. In a deed dated May 23, 1751, Fielding bound himself for £100 unto Thomas Lane, Esq., then chairman of the Middlesex Sessions, and two other justices of the peace, Luke Robinson, Esq., and Henry Butler Pacey, Esq., as a surety that William Pent* British Museum, "Additional Manuscripts,” 32685, f. 59.

low would observe the conditions of the appointment.* Pentlow conducted himself so well in his new office that the justices of Middlesex at one of their Sessions subsequently thanked him for his vigilance and efficiency.† At the same time, Fielding drew up regulations for the guidance of the eighty constables within his immediate jurisdiction and afterwards encouraged Saunders Welch to publish a little treatise on the same subject so that constables might know precisely what was expected of them.

As a lawyer and justice, he saw at once that the existing statutes against violent crimes were inadequate; they seemed to be framed, he declared, more for the escape of highwaymen and footpads than for their conviction. Accordingly, he prepared during his first year in office, as the reader has probably observed, the draft of a "Bill for the better preventing Street Robberies," which he sent to the Lord Chancellor with his "Charge to the Grand Jury." Though the draft is no longer extant, we may assume from Fielding's subsequent proposals that it was a very drastic measure which the Government was not then ready to advocate. He was doubtless advised to try out the old laws. At any rate he adopted this course of action and pursued it with vigour. Quoting from the newspapers under the date of August 29, 1750, "The Gentleman's Magazine" says: "So many highway men and street-robbers are in custody on the impeachment of their accomplices, that the little prisons are quite full; notice was given in the papers, that those who have been robbed might see the impeached persons in Clerkenwell Bridewell, or at Justice Fielding's on their examination." Many of these robbers, however, were acquitted when brought to trial, owing to defects in the law.

And so Fielding resolved, as another point of attack, to * Mr. J. Paul de Castro, "Notes and Queries,'' 11 S. II, 55 (Jan. 16, 1915). ↑ John Fielding, "A Plan for Preventing Robberies,'' 1755, p. 2.